CONWAY -- Faulkner County's voluntary animal-control property tax has raised more than $1.1 million since it took effect in 2006.
More than a decade later, not a dime has been spent despite complaints of stray dogs and cats and of animal dumping in rural areas.
Animal-rescue groups and others have increased the pressure lately on the county's elected leaders to begin the process of establishing an animal shelter. As of May 2, the county had $1,109,433.69 in the fund that has been raised solely through a voluntary 1.5-mill tax since 2006, said county Treasurer Scott Sanson.
"People are going to stop contributing if we don't get something up and running," said Donna Clawson, a member of a citizens' advisory board that has been studying the issue.
Others, including Justice of the Peace Randy Higgins, chairman of the Quorum Court's Courts and Public Safety Committee, are convinced that while the county's animal problem needs to be addressed, the county should take a long-term approach toward establishing a shelter.
"My view is, we will have one opportunity to solve this problem ... with this money which I take very, very seriously," Higgins said. "Giving it out [$10,000 and $20,000] at a time is not going to solve the problem. ... If the county has to go it alone, that's what we've got to do."
In 2011, the Quorum Court approved a nonbinding resolution sequestering the fund until it reached at least $1.5 million -- the minimum sum the court found it would cost to build a shelter, Higgins said.
"The primary issue we have right now is operating costs," estimated at $250,000 to $275,000 annually, he said.
Higgins said he and County Judge Jim Baker have talked with Conway Mayor Tab Townsell about the possibility of teaming up in some way with the city, which unlike the county has a shelter.
That facility, on the city's far west side along U.S. 64, isn't in the best location, but some sort of agreement with the city might still be one way to go, Higgins said. The shelter, as it stands, is running out of room, Clawson said.
Clawson said she believes county residents would contribute to fundraising efforts for a shelter's operations if the process would get underway.
"You can't do a fundraiser for something you don't have," she said.
That process could be for the county to buy land and build a shelter from scratch. Alternatives, she said, include buying a building and turning it into a shelter, working with the county or even converting a building the county already owns into a shelter.
"That [last option] would save us money ... but we lack the ability to go forward" without the Quorum Court's approval, said Clawson, host to the program Gone to the Dogs on Conway Corp.'s local television channel.
The problem received renewed attention recently after dogs attacked two county residents, including one man who was walking his own small dog that was "torn up pretty bad," Higgins said.
Higgins said the Quorum Court committee he heads will want to examine the advisory panel's monetary estimates to be sure they include such expenses as a costly pet incinerator and the kind of flooring required for a facility that will be washed down inside daily.
Robin Stauffer, a board member of ArkanPaws Animal Rescue, said that organization deals mainly with Faulkner and Conway counties and has handled the adoptions of probably 1,500 Faulkner County dogs alone.
"Most of our dogs go to New England," where spay-and-neuter and leash laws are more strictly enforced. She said she has fostered, or temporarily taken care of, about 60 dogs at her own home over the years.
"If people do not live within the city limits, they can't take a dog to the city shelter," Stauffer said. "If they can't get a rescue group to take [the dogs], a lot of times they ... dump them ... in the county. These dogs are not spayed or neutered" and start breeding, compounding the problem.
Stauffer called the situation frustrating.
"The local rescues are all volunteer and we're picking up the tab dealing with the problem," she said. "All we can do is just react to the problem of stray puppies. We can't prevent the puppies because we don't have the money to get people to spay and neuter" their pets.
A shelter, by law, is required to sterilize pets before an adoption, she said.
A county shelter "would give people a solution of what to do with these stray dogs that are dumped on their property," Stauffer said. "A lot of these people are feeding dozens of stray dogs ... or they are shooting the dogs or they're poisoning the dogs ... and dogs and cats are suffering in the meantime."
Another advisory panel member, Susan Shaddox, lives with her husband, Dr. Ken Shaddox, a Conway veterinarian, near Beaverfork Lake just outside Conway and said the stray-animal problem is bad there.
The couple's seven dogs, including a rescue poodle named Zsa Zsa, live on three fenced-in acres but strays roam the area, sometimes in dangerous packs, she said.
Shaddox, who works with the Little Rock-based rescue group Last Chance Arkansas, said she has seen too many homeless, emaciated, freezing pets over the years.
"People will find dogs and just leave them on our doorsteps" at the veterinary clinic and the Shaddoxes' house, she said.
Considering the danger of rabies and recent attacks on people, she said county leaders should realize that "this is truly a public-safety issue" and come up with the needed money, perhaps by reallocating funds.
"The citizens have come up with the money to build a shelter," Shaddox said. "We just need the county and the court to help us get money for operating expenses."
State Desk on 05/10/2016